Key of Service-Learning
By: Tina (Tianyu Zhang)
Student Learning Goal Area: Approaches, Personal, Academic
What did I learn?
How did I learn it?
Why does it matter?
What might / should be done in light of it?
In terms of approaches, I learned that the hyphen in the word “service-learning” should be interpreted as reflection and that communicating with a community is never an easy task. Before meeting with the community members, we have to first estimate which direction our conversation would go in, then brainstorm a list of questions that we may ask in the conversation. However, when encountering some shy customers, it is usually not useful if we directly ask them about their needs. Instead, we can start by chit-chatting with them in order to make them relaxed, then ask about their daily schedules, and try to find some problems or questions that can be discovered further. This gradual conversation progress was learned from my first meeting with the cafeteria staff, one of them is active to speak, while the other just simply nodded her head. Therefore, we chit-chat with her a little bit and tried to discover what she really thought about. This method is important not only in the field of doing service-learning but can also be applied to all kinds of negotiation and communication in which you need to deeply understand the other’s thoughts and specifically raise your proposal.
In terms of personal, I discovered that I am sometimes too aggressive and too urgent in expressing myself and convincing others. I did not sense that it was a problem before. I am not extremely extroverted, actually, sometimes I was even a little bit introverted, however, maybe because of the personal experience of always being an emergent leader in the group, I tended to get used to the outcome that everyone would agree on my decision. This time, in the group, I met a girl who also shared a strong personality with me, and because of our different values and understandings, we often have conflicts in our decisions, and we cannot even convince each other. This makes me feel that I may have stayed in my comfort zone for too long, and have forgotten the feeling of being convinced by others. Therefore, I tried to reflect on myself and warned myself about being patient in listening to others’ opinions, being an active listener. I think this is really a meaningful experience for me to get a better understanding of myself and grow up to be a better me.
Last but not least, in terms of academics, I learned that the process of making a product is never an easy task. It contains many steps, including doing background research, doing material experiments, making prototypes, getting feedback from users, and polishing products. I learned the whole process during this course. Following the steps that the professor assigned us, I experienced how hard but excited the whole process is. And I think with this experience, I will be able to produce more products that I want to build.
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